Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have announced the second installment of B-Sides and Rarities, 16 years after the inaugural edition. Out October 22 on vinyl, CD, and digitally,B-Sides and Rarities Part II includes 27 tracks from between 2005 and 2020. With the announcement comes a previously unreleased song called “Vortex,” recorded in 2006 by Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos. It wasn’t released at the time, a press release notes, because they could not decide whether to bill it as Grinderman or the Bad Seeds. 

In a press release, Cave wrote: 

I always liked the original B-Sides & Rarities more than any of our other albums. It’s the only one I’d listen to willingly. It seems more relaxed, even a bit nonsensical in places, but with some beautiful songs throughout. There is something, too, about the smallness of certain songs that is closer to their original spirit.

B-Sides & Rarities Part II continues this strange and beautiful collection of lost songs from The Bad Seeds. I love the final side of the last disc because it reveals the small and fragile beginnings of some of my favourite Bad Seeds songs. ‘Waiting For You’ complete with bizarre ‘canning factory’ rhythm track, a gorgeous ‘Life Per Se’ deemed too sad for Skeleton Tree, and ‘Earthlings’ that some consider the finest track of the Ghosteen sessions.

Parts one and two of B-Sides and Rarities will also receive a limited-edition release as a seven-vinyl, 83-track box set with new sleeve notes.

SONG TK

B-Sides & Rarities Part II:

01 Hey Little Firing Squad
02 Fleeting Love
03 Accidents Will Happen
04 Free To Walk [With Debbie Harry]
05 Avalanche
06 Vortex
07 Needle Boy
08 Lightning Bolts
09 Animal X
10 Give Us a Kiss
11 Push The Sky Away (Live With the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra)
12 First Skeleton Tree
13 King Sized Nick Cave Blues
14 Opium Eyes
15 Big Dream (With Sky)
16 Instrumental #33
17 Hell Villanelle
18 Euthanasia
19 Life Per Se
20 Steve McQueen
21 First Bright Horses
22 First Girl in Amber
23 Glacier
24 Heart that Kills You
25 First Waiting for You
26 Sudden Song
27 Earthlings